The Scapegoat
by Du Maurier, Daphne
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Very Good- in Good+ dust jacket
- Seller
-
Dunedin, New Zealand, New Zealand
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
London: Victor Gollancz. Very Good- in Good+ dust jacket. 1957. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. No signatures. Moderate spotting to page edges. 2" tear in front panel of dust wrapper. Several 1" and smaller tears in edges of dust wrapper. Dust wrapper protected in archival mylar cover. ; Red boards with gilt titles on spine. Dimensions: 7 1/2" by 5 1/8". The dust wrapper on this copy has a still from the M. G. M. Film on the front panel. The film stared Alec Guiness and Bette Davis. No additional printings noted on copyright page. Price of "10/6" on front flap of dust wrapper. ; 368 .
Synopsis
Daphne DuMaurier's The Scapegoat tells the tale of two men, one French and the other English, who meet by chance and realize they sound and look just alike. Bemused, they spend an evening together and the British man, John, wakes up to find himself now having to live as his French doppleganger.
Reviews
On May 8 2013, Feeney said:
Daphne du Maurier's eerie thriller of 1957, THE SCAPEGOAT, places an uncommonly heavy burden on any reader willing both to ask "what if" and to accept Ms du Maurier's prima facie implausible answers. *** Thirty-eight year old Englishman John lectures in London on French history. His command of the French language is perfect. He can and does pass for French. He is unmarried, all his family are dead. He has few friends. He is a classic "loner." He has been depressed for years. He wants to become intimately involved with real-life French people but his personality will not let him. As usual John is spending his summer- early autumn holidays writing and researching in France before returning home to another year as a boring lecturer. He is seriously considering spending time at the not far away venerable Cistercian abbey La Grande Trappe in Normandy. There he would explore among God-seeking members of this notably non-speaking order whether God's light is to be found in the darkness of silence. *** One evening he breaks his road travels by car at Le Mans. There he and Jean de Gue, Comte de St. Gilles, Barthe have a chance encounter near the train station. Count Jean and lecturer John are 100% look alikes and sound alikes. The count dopes John, takes his clothes and car and drives off to London to escape family responsibilities. Stupidly, John does not alert the French police but allows a servant to take him to the count's chateau. Will he fool Jean de Gue's widowed mother, wife, daughter, brother, an unmarried sister who despises him, servants, relatives, friends and adoring dog? *** Can and will Englishman Jean undo in a short time the considerable evil wrought by the Comte within his family and to the family's ancient ceramic business? What if for some reason the count tires of his game and returns from London to toss the Englishman out? How will he cope with the well intended but not necessarily profitable changes that John has made within family and in business? *** Always hovering in the background is the less than 50 miles distant Abbey of La Trappe. Is that where the troubled Englishman really belongs? And will the count's willing mistress convince our English hero that he is no better nor worse a man than prima facie despicable Jean de Gue? *** If you make a generous enough leap of faith and wholeheartedly embrace du Maurier's implausible premises, you will find in THE SCAPEGOAT a tale of mixed identities to rival Stevenson's 1886 JEKYLL AND HYDE. The novel is also a brooding religious meditation on ways to find or at least seek effectively the God of both the saints and the sinners. -OOO-
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Details
- Bookseller
- Renaissance Books (NZ)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 003993
- Title
- The Scapegoat
- Author
- Du Maurier, Daphne
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good- in Good+ dust jacket
- Edition
- First Edition Thus
- Publisher
- Victor Gollancz
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1957
- Keywords
- Crime Detective Fiction Thriller
Terms of Sale
Renaissance Books
Any book not as described may be returned within 14 days of receipt for a full refund.
About the Seller
Renaissance Books
Biblio member since 2005
Dunedin, New Zealand
About Renaissance Books
We are located in Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand. We have in stock over 8,500 books. We are a general antiquarian and out-of-print home-based bookseller, with some specialty areas in English literature, Maori, Travel, Tibet, and New Zealand history.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- G
- Good describes the average used and worn book that has all pages or leaves present. Any defects must be noted. (as defined by AB...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Copyright page
- The page in a book that describes the lineage of that book, typically including the book's author, publisher, date of...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
- Good+
- A term used to denote a condition a slight grade better than Good.
- Gilt
- The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...